Memoirs of a Militia Sergeant is a work by the Brazilian writer Manuel Antônio de Almeida.
Divided into 2 volumes and 48 titled chapters, it was published in 1854 during Romanticism in Brazil.
Characters
The main characters in the plot are:
- Leonardo: protagonist of the work, son of Leonardo-Pataca and Maria da Hortaliça.
- Leonardo Pataca: father of Leonardo and husband of Maria da Hortaliça.
- Maria da Hortaliça: wife of Leonardo-Pataca and mother of Leonardo.
- Barber: godfather of Leonardo.
- Midwife: godmother of Leonardo.
- pigtail: daughter of midwife and future wife of Leonardo-Pataca.
- Luizinha: girl Leonardo falls in love with and who eventually becomes his wife.
- Ms. Maria: Luizinha's grandmother.
- José Manuel: Luizinha's family friend, interested in their fortune.
- little life: mulatto woman who gets involved with Leonardo.
- Major Vidigal: authority that arrests Leonardo.
Work Summary
The novel revolves around the life of Leonardo, a mischievous and mischievous boy who among so many actions becomes a sergeant: O Sergeant de Milícias. The story takes place in the city of Rio de Janeiro.
As a small child, he was placed in the care of his godparents, a barber and a midwife. That's because his parents, Leonardo-Pataca and Maria da Hortaliça, had a fight. His mother flees to Portugal and his father abandons him.
The barber wanted a good training for the boy, therefore, he endeavored to provide a religious education so that he could become a priest.
However, Leonardo was very mischievous and could barely read and write as a result of his leaving school.
Later on, the boy falls in love with Luizinha, however, their involvement at this point is short-lived.
Luizinha's family was very wealthy. José Manuel, a family friend, decides to ask her mother to marry him in order to keep her wealth and fortune.
Leonardo, knowing his intention, decides to unburden himself with his godparents, who soon talk to Dona Maria, Luizinha's grandmother. This fact caused José Manuel to be expelled from the house and even prohibited from marrying Luizinha.
Leonardo's godfather becomes ill and soon after dies. With that, he receives an inheritance. Interested in the inheritance received by his son, Leonardo-Pataca enters the scene and invites him to live with him.
At this moment, Pataca is already married to the midwife's daughter, Chiquinha, and has a daughter with her.
Leonardo has several arguments with his father and stepmother, which results in his expulsion from the house. During this time, he becomes involved with a mulatto woman named Vidinha and falls in love with her. He starts living with the young people of Rua Vala.
More and more involved with Vidinha, two of her cousins who fight for her love, they start to get jealous of Leonardo.
With this, they tell Major Vidigal that Leonardo is living clandestinely in the youth residence. This results in his arrest by Major Vidigal. Furthermore, he refuses to enlist in the army, being arrested again.
His godmother goes to the prison and asks the major to release Leonardo. Finally, the major offers him the position of Sergeant of Militias.
With the death of Luizinha's husband, who only abused him, Leonardo marries her.
Check the entire work by downloading the PDF here: Memoirs of a militia sergeant.
Work Analysis
Inserted in the romanticism movement, the work is narrated in third person and portrays the life of Rio de Janeiro in the beginning of the 19th century.
Considered an urban or customs novel, it was published in the serials in the Mercantile Mail from Rio de Janeiro. In other words, a weekly chapter was offered to the public.
Thus, Manuel Antônio de Almeida caught the attention of his readers with short and direct chapters and also using colloquial language.
It was the first time during Romanticism that the figure of the “trickster” (picaro) appears in Leonardo's actions. This explains the writer's innovative style along the lines of novels at the time.
Many characters in the work are driven by interests, such as José Manuel and Leonardo-Pataca. Furthermore, some of them have no names, such as Leonardo's godfather and godmother.
Therefore, the writer's intention was to use symbolic allegories in order to include common people who lived in that period in Brazil.
Although the central space was the urban part of Rio de Janeiro, Manuel also describes more remote places as a gypsy camp. In this, the different social classes are addressed in the novel.
It is worth noting that this posture was contrary to the models of Romanticism, since the novels created at that time focused only on aristocratic aspects.
Excerpts from the Work
To better understand the language used by the writer, check out some excerpts from the work below:
Volume I - Chapter I: Origin, Birth and Baptism
“It was in the time of the king.
One of the four corners that form the streets of Ouvidor and Quitanda, intersecting each other, was called at that time — O canto dos meirinhos —; and the name suited it well, because it was the favorite meeting place for all individuals of that class (which enjoyed no small consideration at that time). The bailiffs of today are no more than the caricatured shadow of the bailiffs from the time of the king; these were fearsome and feared people, respectable and respected; they formed one of the extremes of the formidable judicial chain that encompassed the whole of Rio de Janeiro at the time when the demand was an element of life among us: the opposite extreme were the judges. Now the extremes touch, and these, touching, closed the circle within which the terrible ones passed combat of citations, you will prove, main and final reasons, and all those judicial gestures that were called the process.
Hence its moral influence.”
Volume I - Chapter XX: Fire in the Field
“At the appointed time, the two, godfather and godson, came to fetch D. Maria and her family, as they had treated: it was shortly after Ave Maria, and a large crowd of families, from ranches of people who went to Campo and others to Lapa, where, as is known, the Divine. Leonardo walked looking completely oblivious to what was going on around him; he stumbled and bumped into those he encountered; a single idea gnawed at his heart; if you asked him what that idea was, he might not even know how to say it. They finally arrived faster than the barber had supposed, because that night Leonardo seemed to have wings on his feet, so quickly had he walked and forced his godfather to walk with him.”
Volume II - Chapter XXV: Happy Conclusion
“The godmother spent with the widow and her aunt almost all the time of disgust, and accompanied them to mass on the seventh day. Leonardo also attended on this occasion, and took the family home after the sacrifice was over.
That handshake that on the day of her husband Luizinha's funeral had given Leonardo to D. Maria, as well as many other facts that followed this one did not escape her.
The point is that a certain idea that was in his mind did not seem extravagant to him.
Often, at the fall of Hail Mary, when the good old woman sat praying on her stool in a corner of the room, between a Our Father and an Ave Maria from her blessed rosary, he had the idea of remarrying the fresh little widow, who was in danger of becoming one moment to another helpless in a world where husbands, like José Manuel, are not hard to come by, especially to a little widow.”
Entrance Exam Questions
1. (FUVEST) Indicate the alternative that correctly refers to the protagonist of Memórias de um Sergeant de Milícias, by Manuel Antônio de Almeida:
a) In him, as well as in minor characters, there is the continuous and amusing effort to dodge the chance of adverse conditions and the eagerness to enjoy the breaks of good luck.
b) This serialized hero makes himself known above all in the dialogues, in which he reveals at the same time the malice learned in the streets and the romantic idealism he seeks to hide.
c) The assumed satyr personality is the mask of his genuinely pure lyrical background, illustrating the thesis of "natural goodness", adopted by the author.
d) As a cynical, he coldly calculates marital careerism; but the moral subject always emerges, condemning cynicism itself to the hell of guilt, remorse, and atonement.
e) It is a kind of vital clay, still amorphous, to which pleasure and fear show the paths to follow, until its final transformation into a sublimated symbol.
Alternative to: In him, as well as in minor characters, there is the continuous and amusing effort to dodge the chance of adverse conditions and the eagerness to enjoy the breaks of good luck.
2. (UFPR 2009) Memoirs of a militia sergeant, by Manuel Antônio de Almeida, has deserved attention from literary critics for well over a century. Identify, among the excerpts from literary reviews below, which ones refer to this work.
1. This work is, of his first books, the one that most has the air of modernity referred to by Barreto Filho, “displacing the interest of the event objective for the study of characters”, in line, therefore, with the psychological novel to which he would definitively devote himself, breaking with the tendency to the novel so much in vogue. (Adapted from: COUTINHO, Afranio. Critical Study. P. 26.)
2. This work differs from most romantic novels, as it presents a series of procedures that are beyond the standard of romantic prose. The protagonist is neither a hero nor a villain, but a sympathetic rogue who leads the life of an ordinary person; there is no idealization of women, nature or love, the situations portrayed being real; the language is close to journalistic, leaving aside the excessive metaphorization that characterizes romantic prose. (Adapted from: CHERRY, William Roberto; MAGALHÃES, Thereza Cochar. Portuguese Languages, vol II, p. 182.)
3. [...] the chronological distance of this work is of a few years, which allows us to classify it as a memoir rather than a historical novel. Hence the argument, which the writer heard from a colleague of the “Correio Mercantil”, of bearing characteristics of document of a historical phase of Rio de Janeiro, perhaps still in force at the time the narrative was elaborated. From this documentary content comes the realism that permeates [...] the entire work: an instinctive realism, almost of reporting social, lacking only scientific archivals to become the orthodox Realism of the second half of the century XIX. (Adapted from: MOISÉS, Massaud, Brazilian literature through texts. P. 173.)
4. It is superfluous to increase the documental value of the work. Sociological critique has already done this with due care. This work gives us, in fact, a synchronic cut of Brazilian family life in urban areas in a phase in which a structure no longer purely colonial, but still far from the framework, was already outlined. industrial-bourgeois. And, as the author actually lived with the people, the mirroring was distorted only by the comic angle. Which is, for a long time, the bias through which the artist sees the typical, and above all the popular typical. (Adapted from: BOSI, Alfredo. Concise history of Brazilian literature. P. 134.)
The following excerpts refer to the work Memories of a militia sergeant:
a) 1, 2 and 3 only
b) 2 and 4 only
c) 1 and 4 only
d) 2, 3 and 4 only
e) 1, 2, 3 and 4
Alternative d: 2, 3 and 4 only
3. (UFRS-RS) Read the text below, taken from the novel Memórias de um Sargento de Milícias, by Manuel Antônio de Almeida.
“This time however Luizinha and Leonardo, it is not to say that they came with their arms, as the latter had wanted when they went to the Field, they went further than that, they came hand in hand very familiar and naively. And naively we don't know if it can be rightly applied to Leonardo.”
Consider the statements below about the comment made in relation to the word naively in the last sentence of the text:
I. The narrator points to the character's naivete in the face of life and the unknown experiences of first love.
II. The narrator, knowing who Leonardo is, questions the character of the character and his intentions.
III. The narrator accentuates the ironic tone that characterizes the novel.
Which ones are correct?
a) only I
b) only II
c) only III
d) only II and III
e) I, II and III
Alternative b: only II
Read more:
- Manuel Antônio de Almeida
- Romanticism in Brazil
- Romantic Prose in Brazil
- The Language of Romanticism
- urban romance
